greatly on that account, and the caliphate remained settled in his progeny down to our own day; no caliph of the Banū al-ʿAbbās has ever come from any line but his. “Such is the ordaining of the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing.” (Q 6:96; 36:38; 41:12)

In that same year there died: ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar al-ʿUmari; Hāshim ibn Hāshim; and Hishām ibn Ḥassān, the companion of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.

[Then the year 148 AH began.]

In it al-Manṣūr dispatched Ḥumayd ibn Qaḥṭaba to campaign against the Turks who had sown devastation the previous year in the region of Tiflis, but he found none of them, for they had withdrawn to their own lands.

That year the pilgrimage was led by Jaʿfar ibn Abī Jaʿfar, and the provincial deputies were the same as those of the preceding year.

Also in it Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq died; the treatise entitled “Ikhtilāj al-Aʿḍāʾ” is ascribed to him, but the attribution is false.

In the same year Sulaymān ibn Mihrān al-Aʿmash—one of the foremost hadith scholars—passed away in Rabīʿ al-Awwal, as did ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith, al-ʿAwwām ibn Ḥawshab, al-Zubaydī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Laylā, and Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān.

[Then the year 149 AH began.]

During it the construction of Baghdad’s wall and moat was completed. That summer ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad led the border expedition, penetrating Byzantine territory with al-Ḥusayn ibn Qaḥṭaba and Muḥammad ibn al-Ashʿath; Muḥammad ibn al-Ashʿath died on the journey.

That year the pilgrimage was headed by Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī. Al-Manṣūr appointed him governor of Mecca and the Ḥijāz in place of his uncle ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAlī, while the provincial governors remained the same as in the previous year.